The present invention relates to a POS system including a POS (point-of-sale) terminal apparatus and a device connected thereto, and relates more particularly to technology for determining device usage.
JAVA POS is an application programming interfacing for building point-of-sale (POS) systems using JAVA (registered trademark). JAVA POS also has a function for using device statistics, that is, information relating to usage of devices connected to a POS terminal. The JAVA POS standard enables an application running on a POS terminal to acquire and use these device statistics for example as device usage information. This usage information is information indicating usage of particular device functions, and in the case of a printer is information relating to the number of lines printed or the number of characters printed, for example.
Depending on the model or type of device, some devices have an internal maintenance counter for counting usage of particular functions. A device having such an internal counter can acquire device statistics about device operation by reading these counters. There are also devices that do not have such an internal counter.
Some applications that run on a POS terminal can preferably use such device statistics regardless of whether the connected device has a maintenance counter.
Furthermore, the maintenance counters provided in such devices are typically used for maintenance of that device. A POS terminal connected to the device therefore preferably does not rewrite the maintenance counters.